


A Field to Lay Down Your Grief

by mizdiz



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Missing Scene, Season/Series 09 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 02:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18273692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizdiz/pseuds/mizdiz
Summary: They walk until the soles of their feet hurt, not that they notice. They've both walked longer with worse injuries more times than they can count. They have a destination, it's just that they won't know it until they find it.post ep 915; missing scene





	A Field to Lay Down Your Grief

She didn't attend her daughter's funeral.

 

“ _Why?_ ” she'd asked, and the look she gave him when he said, “ _'Cause that's your little girl_ ,” is seared in his brain forever.

 

There are a lot of things that have made themselves at home in his memory like unwelcome house guests. Most of them bloody. Most of them violent. But the ones that aren't are the ones that hurt the most.

 

It's not Sophia's ambling walk or vacant eyes that gut him, but instead the way he can never forget how it felt to feel the sobs rattle through her body as he held her back with an arm across her chest. He can still smell the air that day, thick with walker rot and hay in a barn full of the dead. Sometimes, even years and years later, when his dreams are at their worst, he hears the word “Sophia,” being wailed like a prayer being broken.

 

She does attend her son's funeral, because she's the Queen, and people have been lost, and that's what queens do, isn't it? They celebrate when the people celebrate, and mourn when they mourn.

 

He sees her stock still by her husband, not holding him for support. For all the times Daryl has been called guarded, he finds it funny how many miss the thick iron bars and the deep moat dug around her; an isolation fit for a queen.

 

Siddiq's words, though wracked with emotion, sound like nothing but empty syllables being thrown into the abyss. How many funerals has Daryl attended? From the time he sat on a pew in a church his family never prayed at, mourning his mother who cremated herself, to right now, where he keeps his usual distance from the crowd? There are only so many ways grief can be manifested into words; after a while it becomes meaningless.

 

Still, the crowd weeps—some of them his friends, some of them strangers—but Carol doesn't weep. There are tears on her face, her mouth turned down, but she does not weep. With his back a latticework of scar tissue, Daryl knows what it means to keep one's deepest wounds unseen.

 

Siddiq continues to punctuate the air with words that mean nothing, and she continues to listen, and he continues to watch her hide in plain sight.

 

He's so tired of funerals.

 

He's so tired.

 

*

 

Long after the sun goes down, he waits for her by the gate. There is no prearranged rendezvous, but he knows, with the same certainty he feels when he aims his bow and hits his target, that she'll come.

 

She approaches him, her footsteps deft, but no match for Daryl's hunter's ears. Her husband is fast asleep, his grief dragging him under. But for her—for them—grief is a stimulant. It's a feeling that demands an action. She stands beside him and looks at him with expectation. He nods his head towards the exit.

 

They head out with no direction, unstable and aimless like walkers, except that Daryl is never truly lost. His sense of direction is as involuntary as his breath. He could never be a wanderer because he always knows where he is, even when he wants to pretend he's somewhere else.

 

They don't talk; don't have to. Language has always been strange between them. The first time he ever noticed her—like, properly noticed her—she was driving a pickaxe through her husband's skull, and he didn't need her to speak to him, because she heard her clear as day:

 

“Love and hate can be so intertwined it's crazy,” she'd told him without saying a word. “These blows to his brain should feel like freedom, so why am I still chained?”

 

Sometime later he said the same thing to her, only it came out, “Merle never did anything like that his whole life.” But she'd understood.

He's learned that every once in a great while you come across a soul so similar to yours that the rules of communication cease to matter.

 

In their silence on the stretch of uneven terrain through the woods, Carol tells him, “I stood in the doorway of his room for an hour today. It was as childless as a barren womb, and I hate that this emptiness isn't unfamiliar, just perennial.”

 

In response he says wordlessly, “I tried so hard to keep you from seeing him, but I know it wouldn't have mattered. The sight of the trauma is the picture in the picture book, but it's the words, the story, that stays with you.”

 

He tells her that he's sorry.

 

She says that she forgives him.

 

The only sound between them is the crunching of leaves and twigs beneath their feet, and the rustling of the nocturnal animals starting out their day.

 

They walk until the soles of their feet hurt, not that they notice. They've both walked longer with worse injuries more times than they can count. They have a destination, it's just that they won't know it until they find it.

 

There's a break in the treeline that gives way to a clearing. He holds a branch back like a gentleman holding open a car door, and she steps over rocks and dirt and patches of grass, and once she's through he follows.

 

Her breath is sharp. His hand finds her lower back, holding her in support. That's the thing about her bars and moats—he’s the only one allowed inside them.

 

The moon's not quite full but it's bright, and the sky is clear and brimming with stars. The lights from so far away illuminate the clearing, and in their sudden sight they see a couple dozen white roses in an expansive bloom that goes all the way into the shadows across the way.

 

They don't touch them or pick them, as though they're sacred. They just look—hand on her back, silent tears in both of their eyes—and take in the Earth's memorial designed specifically for them.

 

No amount of flowers will ever be enough, but this field of roses asks them to lay down some of their grief; it's too heavy, it tells them, let me lighten the load.

 

She rests her head on his shoulder and breathes out her pain.

 

She says, out loud this time, “I miss him.”

 

It means so much more than that.

 

His response is just as loaded. He eulogizes her son he kept safe for her until he couldn't; the dead daughter he said he'd save and didn't. He holds her close and, with deep, desperate love, he says it all in two words.

 

“I know.”

 

They continue to watch the Cherokee roses shine in the moonlight.

 

A funeral fit for a queen.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> -diz


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